1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a publishing terminal that records and publishes content information on a recording medium, to a content publishing system, and to a publishing method for such a content publishing system.
2. Related Art
Japanese Unexamined Patent Appl. Pub. JP-A-2007-128130 teaches an unmanned information terminal (referred to below as a “kiosk”) that can record content information (referred to below as simply “content”) on a recording medium and then print on the label side of the recording medium after receiving an order from a customer. Such kiosks typically require several ten minutes to complete the content recording and label printing operations, thus causing the customer to wait during this production period. Furthermore, even if the kiosk can accept order reservations, if a previous reservation has already been received, the waiting time increases accordingly.
It is conceivable to install plural kiosks in order to shorten the customer waiting time. In such a configuration, however, customers will typically prefer to submit their order to the kiosk with the shortest waiting time. However, which kiosk has the shortest waiting time is unknown until an order is actually entered into each kiosk. As a result, providing plural kiosks does not necessarily improve customer convenience.
It is also conceivable that a customer does not want to have the recording medium published at the time and location where the order is placed. For example, if such kiosks are installed in multiple train stations, a customer might enter a reservation at a kiosk in a station near their place of employment and want to pick up the completed recording medium at a station near home on the way home from work. For the customer, this configuration has the advantage of eliminating customer waiting time. For the kiosk (the side providing the publishing service), this also has the advantage of being able to effectively use idle time, that is, time when the terminal is not otherwise completing an order.